The Police Thought Their Radio Was Encrypted... It Wasn't

[@WaltTFB]

Well, at least it wasn't called Skynet.

[@MrBlueBurd0451]

There's a parcel delivery service around here in the Netherlands called Sky Net. Two words.

[@Pwills]

@@MrBlueBurd0451as long as they don’t become self aware you will be alright 🤣😂🤣😂

[@cyberbij1]

SkyNet is the name of the UK army Satellite coms network.

[@stephenB-yq9kw]

I designed skynet

[@madeinengland4910]

! They called it Star Link Instead 😅🤣😂

[@r00tyschannel52]

The thing about the police using trunked radio was that it was actually better to monitor than the old channel based system. With the trunked system you could set priorities for talkgroups and never miss something you were interested in. Now without going into too much detail, yes at the time there were free tools available to track the motorola trunking used by met police.

[@voltare2amstereo]

Police don't do much anyway. Van stolen? Sorry Break in? Sorry Attacked? Sorry Say naughty word on Facebook? Jail

[@captng]

True...we. Don't care. Just write the report and done. Next

[@dwavenminer]

Ive seen one exception; They will deal with a stolen van if said van was owned by a military vet with a history of being a vigilante, owns a large collection of weapons, and is part of a martial arts group... TLDR, the police are just there to protect the criminals...

[@36iRealisedImOldToday]

To be fair to them it's the politicians and courts that put you in prison.

[@captng]

@@voltare2amstereo I wanted to say is criminals have no consequences or low consequences while law enforcement officers face huge personal liability and always receive consequences. Again, if I showed up on scene to go physical it means I showed up to early and if you disagree with me please join us. But most could not qualify

[@mpsmith35]

When I worked for Pye/Philips in the 80s I developed a Band3 trunked radio base station using MPT1327 signalling which could control up to 10 channels. I wrote the base station firmware and a colleague wrote the mobile firmware - I think it was called TSC10. We got it working and demonstrated it to interested parties. I have no idea whether it ever went to market, but I know that British Rail were one of the interested parties.

[@Kq4hcuDan]

Here in America I been running a police scanner since I was a child and now in my 40's I still run trunking scanners and I'll have always a appreciation for citizens band, GMRS and amateur radio.

[@WyeindependantMedia]

thanks for giving us the courage to revisit an old passion..

[@ds9268]

Another fantastic, informative video Lewis, thanks for this one!!

[@nco_gets_it]

getting an actual trunked radio network up on such a large area and large number of devices for 6 million is nothing short of a miracle. These were not only cutting edge in 99, but incredibly expensive. Although lack of encryption is portrayed as a bug here, you have to remember that this is before AES encryption we are used to today. While obsolete now, this system was pretty nice back then.

[@attribute-4677]

Hell yeah!! I was worried there wouldn’t be anymore videos on public safety radio. Thank you!!

[@KJ7BZC]

This is known as Motorola Type II trunking in the US, still in use today in some places. Really cool seeing the transmitter site pictures, Ive got one of the Motorola “6809” controllers that were used in these systems. Slowly been restoring it back to functionality, but it’s been hard to find any information let alone pictures of real installations. Also neat seeing that the MTS2000 did indeed come in a VHF version with type II support, haven’t been able to find one here but I guess I’ll have to look in UK markets!

[@bertblankenstein3738]

The M6809 is an 8 bit Motorola microprocessor, just in case someone doesn't know. It was used in the TRS80 Color Computers that came out in the early 80s. Probably common knowledge...

[@KJ7BZC]

​@@bertblankenstein3738 Yeah the controller itself is referred to as "6809 SmartZone" and uses the 6809 microprocessor. Makes it really hard to find information on the controller when all my searches just get results about the processor...

[@bisurdaddy]

If I had seen this comment 6 months ago I could have hooked you up. UCA just finished going live on their new P25 phase 2, upgraded from Motorola type ll. I had several installations near me. The majority of police have now gone encrypted unfortunately, and my home patrol has gotten a lot quieter. Now I have a decent excuse to go sdr or pick up an sds100.

[@thetwistedsock3253]

Standard equipment: cardboard RS box 😊

[@arthurtwoshedsjackson6266]

The Met used smart zone. Was hardly encrypted 😂

[@HarveyKnicks]

I remember Motorola Smartzone used by THE MET before introducing the Tetra Airwave Service.

[@jameshill3165]

Mildenhall, Lakenheath, Feltwell and Alconbury all used a Starnet system, but now they use P25 with AES encryption. You'll get the odd message in the clear, but not enough to make monitoring worthwhile 😢

[@Ka9radio_Mobile9]

I still have my AOR AR 1000!🥰

[@charlie_nolan]

If they used Type II SmartZone, they could have had encryption, digital, private calls, etc but it just whoever set it up just didn't do that. Seems like a very large impressive system though. My state began work on their statewide type II system a few years earlier (now it is P25).

[@tvtechnicaldirector]

King County, WA here in the USA was running a wide-area analog SmartZone 800MHz trunking system up until last year. Snohomish County to the North, is still using theirs. Quite an impressive shelf life for a radio network. LA Metro in Los Angeles is still using their analog 900MHz SmartNet simulcast system as well.

[@OldManBadly]

When I was still in Canada, the Montreal police force (and fire, municipal services, and others) moved to this type of Motorola system they call SERAM. Initially it was used "in the open", but over time they have all moved to using digital modes within the same system. Digital audio already makes these things harder to monitor, but adding simple encryption on top pretty much made them impossible to monitor. Trunking was not the end of scanning, but digital and digital encryption pretty much are death sentences to it, similar to tetra TDMA type system. It is a hobby that sort of ended for the most part unless you have interests in taxis and gabby security guards.

[@6643bear]

Hi Lewis , another great interesting article, I remember when I was in the the met we had a scanner I think it was a bearcat in our network control centre whereby we monitor the system with if issues poor comms etc , I had a scanner to . We had the Mod police in our system. There was an option to interface Met radio on to out Met phone but the Met didn’t go for this because of the additional cost. Regards mark G8rde

[@mpol701]

@@6643bear I had bearcats and a, radio shack scanner on metradio, and yes had mod police talk groups, royal protection as, well, naughty stuff

[@arthurtwoshedsjackson6266]

When you coming back on the radio Mark ?????

[@arthurtwoshedsjackson6266]

There was the Uniden 245xlt which I had along with some other kit using a ICOM PCR1000

[@mpol701]

@arthurtwoshedsjackson6266 think had a gre or radio shack model as well as bc245

[@mpol701]

@@6643bear Then the 152 mhz mainset including the purple channel am 152.5875 I think with palace switchboard on, especially interesting night of Windsor Castle fire, principle in car getting info from police post at Windsor, just as brunswick to were burst into flames, and a Scottish palace officer saying oh no the brunswick tower has judt burst into flames ooh noo

[@daveg8htfadlibaudio250]

Spot on again Lewis as always. 😀😀

[@charlie_nolan]

Also, they could have totally done the status system without trunking. Motorola MDC, Kenwood FleetSync, even the older MODAT existed at that point and worked well.

[@ChocolateTampon]

I remember back in the late 70's you could listen to the police and fire etc on the old shortwave radiogram (looked like a wardrobe on it's back with a turntable and a radio, AM MW, FM and SW). In the 90's you could listen in on a scanner around 450+Mhz (ish). It was a shame when it all moved to airwave. Nowadays, the market is flooded with cheap transceivers that transmit on those old frequencies. It would have been fun to have those radios back in the day lol

[@ianwalker1182]

They were at the high end of band 2. I lived on top of a hill and sometimes when listening to a BBC {not so} local radio station would hear police comms.

[@MHLivestreams]

I remember alinco did a few nice transceivers in the maplin catalogues back in the day, but they certainly weren't 25 quid like today!

[@mpol701]

146 to 156 mhz where the main set vhf freqs moved from 100 mhz to base and inputs, most counties had a systems, but a few had fm like starnet

[@mpol701]

The starnet was vhf trunked but in Scotland and other areas there were other fm systems

[@mpol701]

​@@ianwalker1182they moved off that around 1980s and moved to 152 to 155 mhz put 143 to 148 inputs and some singles at both ends as well

[@7eis]

I'd be very surprised if foreign actors aren't listening in on 'encrypted' radio. They even outline in documentation that dmo-tmo gateways are not to be permanently deployed as they pose a security risk

[@TheKingOfInappropriateComments]

There is no limit to the wasteful spending to avoid transparency and accountability.

[@bobroberts2371]

Is your life transparent and are you being held accountable through constant surveillance?

[@boilerroombob]

......i liked smartzone...when on call out in London 20 years ago i used to be able to listen to multiple police areas at once ..... Great video lewis

[@Subgunman]

Well this system was up my ally, I have worked with both Motorolas Securenet systems as well as its competitor LTR. Motorola utilized up to 20 frequencies that radios could be assigned to used. Motorola utilized the first five frequencies as the data channels where every 24 hours the system would switch to the next channel to direct traffic on the system. Now in the states police did utilize DES encryption on tactical groups. As for LTR it was a similar system but far more simpler. The disadvantage was that if a radio was assigned a home channel to monitor in standby and that channels repeaters failed, customers homed into that repeater were left dead in the water. We always programmed a secondary home channel into the radios. Radios were not smart enough to switch to the secondary home repeater and customers had to be educated to switch to the secondary in order to complete communications. Basically LTR did not have a failsafe system that would force the radio to scan for the next home channel which was incorporated I. The Motorola system.

[@Tesabild]

The time when the fire brigade and rescue service pagers still had a listening function here in Germany.

[@GateKommand]

10/9 was an "Officer Requires Urgent Assistance" call in South Yorkshire before the advent of Status Codes. I think that was one of the reasons the Stat Codes were developed - differing forces having differing "10" Codes?

[@tommarshall7285]

Same as staffs. Don't think I ever heard anyone say '10.9 over.'

[@26CW128Jake]

Essex Police still use some 10 codes, including 10/9. 10/7 - please repeat 10/8 - are your Comms secure (basically asking if the public can hear the radio) 10/9 - Urgent assistance

[@mpol701]

Hertfordshire was 10 7 repeat also, 10 9 was a on or vehicle check

[@DevonLad]

10-9 was urgent assistance in Devon and Cornwall too. It changed to Code Zero towards the end of the 90's.

[@nib213]

10-9 was urgent assistance in Wales

[@AdamSWL]

Love how the newspaper articles report the system as "totally secure" 😂 And interesting how they incorporated scanner trap talkgroups to stop a conventional scanner cold. An EDACS system local to me once upon a time would employ 5 seconds of beeping after a user de-keyed to hold up the channel. As you were forced to listen to the beeping, the users of that talkgroup would now be continuing their transmission on another frequency in the trunked pool. This resulted in missed transmissions and on a busy system, finding the users you were interested in was almost impossible. But then Trunk Tracker III solved all that! 🙂 The (U)BC245XLT handheld was just God tier at the time!

[@the80hdgaming]

This is very close to the current P25 system our provincial police, EMS and Road Maintenance crews use here in Ontario, Canada

[@bungle6668]

Im almost posotive, a certain G station in Oldham has a pile of that kit in his "Room of doom" radio kit graveyard!

[@Simon_Rafferty]

Another good bit of research - well done!

[@wingman1392]

Home office didn't allow the Met to use digital trunk, because the met would have had no reason to join Airwave, because they would have had all the advantages they want. Digital voice, wireless data services, telephone integration, tracking, and digital messaging. So "handcuff" the Met to analogue trunking.

[@julianmorrisco]

Jebuz. Take one look at the ‘success’ of American policing. Sure, not every system and procedure they have are going to be bad, but US policing is, almost without fail, the opposite of community policing. The yanks with their guns and tanks consider police a paramilitary gang, at odds with everyone, not just criminals. I get that their toys and bluster must be appealing to police who are supposed to work ‘softly softly’ and be part of the community, not just controlling the community, but the greatest thing about UK police is the fact that the average citizen does not need to be afraid of them. Yes, there are problems. But compared to the average in places like the US and Australia, UK policing is a massive success of policing by consent. With obvious egregious exceptions for how some of them treat women and the remaining spots of racism.

[@BillyRiff-RAF]

Please do Nokia Actionet, another interesting trunked system.

[@ugh-yes-its-me]

If it helps at all, Actionet used MPT1327 signaling and - instead of MPT1343 - its own numbering scheme called ANN. The system had an interesting (optional) feature that allowed a radio user to divert individual calls to a mailbox if they were busy or off duty.

[@haydenparsons5783]

ok i wanna say something. this action to share radio monitering is in fact illegal. its genrally accepted that its fine to listen privately but its illegal to share those transmissions

[@jplacido9999]

Listening in is illegal in most of the world. Only unwanted listenning (Police or Military traasmissions "overflowing" your receiver while you were listenning to your normal broadcast) were previewed in law as innocent. In practice, it is difficult to get someone listenning in (without traps or someone telling). If you would keep it quiet, you could survive it. Almost everywhere in the world it would be illegal to take notes on frequencies, recording, listenning, etc,etc. not to avoid it, but to have a legal base to prosecute the "offenders". "Encryption is the way to avoid your bosses to listen in to what your saying (they have paid your system) but advanced enemies will listen to all police/military transmissions😂😂 The danger with "encrypted" transmissions is that you think you can speak freely without codes, and that's what the enemy expects you to do...

[@carlzeiss4871]

Shut it parsons you sap.

[@thedallastexan]

Security through obscurity 👍

[@rbmwiv]

In the US where I live before they switched to the encrypted network they use now I kept a scanner in my car programmed for all the police in any area I would be traveling in. I have had a dozen APBs out on my car. Never got caught. Mainly did it for fun because I knew my car was faster and I knew where everyone was.

[@StreakyP]

one of the earliest ways to upset the scanners was using 12.5khz channels but on a 6.25khz offset which was a bitch to tune on 25khz/5khz stepped scanners at that time

[@rodrickbourque]

Absolutely love the Motorola Quantar repeaters. That's what I run for my P25 repeater. Also have an analog/digital bridge using a Motorola DIU3000.

[@mpol701]

Metradio was great I could program up talk groups of special use channels like palaces, royal protection, mod police, diplomatic police etc

[@mpol701]

That was a Motorola type 2 and I had a full talk group list sent to me so scanner was programed with best talk groups and tagged up and it operated with uhf standard non trunked as well and radios had Heathrow 455 mhz, bank of England convoy 456.4 and divisional put if London border 452 mhz patriot house of Parliament 452.4 plus stadiums on 450 mhz

[@mpol701]

So the radios coukd be used conventional channels on standard uhf home office or trunk freqs

[@mpol701]

At sane time uhf home office and 147 mhz sibgle tactical freqs and crime squads 155 mhz were also still in use, some masc by then on 55 but many crime squad ops I heard oanalogue as well My thing was royal protection so I focussed on big events or any royal events

[@mpol701]

By 2010 it was then over for analogue in met area

[@BrianMorrison]

Very interesting, just goes to show how the increase in computer controlled scanners could break the security of simplistic radio systems. Of course, monitoring the emergency services in the US is entirely legal so naturally the scanners developed there were able to keep up with the technology changes.

[@duncan9237]

146.5875 (mobile) 154.2000 (base) channel 1 Staffordshire 146.6125 (mobile) 154.5500 (base) channel 2 Staffordshire Ive a document with all forces listed dated 1995.

[@malalexander3515]

Motorola Smartzone Trunked Radio. I worked on such a system in Australia for 14 years.

[@snakezdewiggle6084]

10-9 means "repeat your last".

[@RingwayManchester]

I know… I just said

[@snakezdewiggle6084]

@RingwayManchester I seriously swear that I heard like a 8 or 9 word phrase. But it is now correct. Like you, I'm seriously into Radio. Must be another Mandela event. Cheerz.

[@buffplums]

I remember once going on an HF Chirpsounder course at a company called Marlborough Communications … can’t say what else they did there but it was a bit like visiting Qs lab… plus the staff Wee a great laugh and used to take us out to lunch each day. Before we went out we had a weigh in and when we got back we had a weigh in once again. You weren’t allowed to go for a shit or a piss until after the weigh in. Whoever had the overall net gain in weight won a big box of Choo Olathe at the end plus a special certificate 😂 I miss those sort of laughs and also working to component level on radio kit as a maintainer in the RAF and even working to sub system level A/B a on a mobile radar system was still interesting enough to maintain … where the hell has Britain gone … we are last in everything these days

[@UKsystems]

In most cases the conscription can always be broken

[@arthurtwoshedsjackson6266]

1:30 had to handfuls of those A4 booklets when they came out around 1998/1999

[@scottstrails9369]

Great vid ,thanks

[@bobroberts2371]

Time 112 How does power get to rural radio sites? I don't see any near by power poles.

[@iClipper]

underground cables? lmao

[@richcolour]

4:34 so that's where they keep them

[@AS-ye8wl]

Starnet had a weird entry frequency on VHF which no one ever really was sure what it was for, it broadcast the South Staffs Police channel in the clear without trunking - I don't think it was in 155MHz band but it was close (146MHz?), various thoughts whether or not it was an A2G channel as it was too good to be a harmonic. Some teams did have encryption modules in the radios, they didn't use Cougar which a lot of others did. Ambulance dropped out as they didn't see what was in it for them - they already had a wide band VHF system and didn't see the value in upgrading just to get interoperability as there was some very limited interoperability on UHF police channels anyway.

[@tech-rich]

I've seen pictures of old Staffs interoperability equipment at a site labeled 'Reverse working' so this is possibly related. Perhaps a feed for neighbouring forces to allow them to patch into their main scheme or control room? I know Staffs Fire maintained at least one AM 70 MHz repeater on Ipstones Edge that allowed outside brigades to contact their control room.

[@AS-ye8wl]

@tech-rich You might be right...the CMPG links had some complexity if I remember right so could be something to do with that. Starnet never really worked also because you had to keep VHF alive for public order/hailing resources/pursuits so needed some hacks.

[@tech-rich]

@@AS-ye8wl It was always going to be difficult with interops when everyone around you is on a different frequency band or modulation.

[@jplacido9999]

​@@tech-rich Interop is not necessary. Only for coordination between chiefs. If really necessary for some odd reason, audio patches can be privided, and averyone keeps its own network. About "common systems" (Airwave and other tetra styled networks): Never put all the eggs on one basket. You'll regret it...

[@tech-rich]

@jplacido9999 I know for Fire at least that there were agreements in place for neighbouring brigades to take over calls in an emergency. Also, fire brigades had a requirement to be able to directly contact other control rooms if landlines were down.

[@andrewandrews7427]

Is it scanner proof nowadays?

[@KeystoneInvestigations]

I still maintain if the RF is floating around out there then we the people should be able to listen to it! 🙂

[@thisandthat871]

So interesting and informative 👍

[@associatedblacksheepandmisfits]

Starlink could work 😮

[@martynjohnwulfran9439]

I purchased an bearcat truck tracker scanner and had it programmed and worked brilliantly with fire and police ..

[@alannorthdevonuk763]

Used this to pick up UK services?

[@semperoccultus]

In uk? Ha ha ha ha ha. Can u r proof about this funny comment? Bye

[@mpol701]

They were good on Motorola system metradio and a vhf military system at Salisbury plain so yes bear at scanners with trunk, Motorola type 2 were very useful for met radio after the vhf storno system replaced We had an edqcs system tested I think before that was being tested and listening on a scanner after each over woukd be a set of tones holiding I on that freq At incident I coukd use a normal scanner and scan the inputs to do quite well, on the metradio each area had differant ctcss on the input freqs

[@alannorthdevonuk763]

@semperoccultus Sorry, don't understand, illiterate! Please try again.

[@mpol701]

@@alannorthdevonuk763 the trunk tracker scanners worked on met radio London and starnet, also am army system at Salisbury plain

[@buffplums]

But by the way fantastic channel mate, your knowledge is brilliant. Wonder what your background is, what you did

[@harrythompson6977]

imagine if people that knew said this yeas ago

[@johnorrells3797]

Are you sure Staffs used 10 codes? West Mercia used 7 codes, if my memory serves me correct 72 was Rodger understood.

[@RingwayManchester]

It came from an ex staffs copper

[@tommarshall7285]

Staffs 100% used 10 codes

[@carlowingfield7743]

Policemen thinking ?

[@winstonchurchill6506]

Oops

[@tartarughaninja4]

please, drop the outro music part. or make it quieter. please.

[@ianfinn2110]

More Cold War radio videos please.

[@hooks4638]

Sometimes, when he says things like "The 6 million pound system...." I don't immediately recognize/process pounds as £. So instead of money for a half a second I'm left thinking how does he know how much it weighs and why is that important. 😂

[@rbryanhull]

Same, bruh

[@Olek130273]

👍

[@rohnkd4hct260]

Everything is going encrypted here. So much for a great hobby.

[@HarveyKnicks]

Monitoring the EMS in the UK finished forever the day the UK Tetra Airwave Service was introduced back in 2001 when Lancs Police were one of thee first Forces in the UK to migrate over to Tetra Radio TMO system.

[@jplacido9999]

​@@HarveyKnicks Only for you. Americans and russians kept listening in much easier (digital complex systems are easier for big money Countries).

[@madeinengland4910]

Its Called" Star Link " now,And it reaches right around the world,or across the world ,for the flat Earthers out there 😅🤣😂🤯

[@Milcom34]

Thanks RM. *** Great Stuff.

[@rbmwiv]

In the US where I live before they switched to the encrypted network they use now I kept a scanner in my car programmed for all the police in any area I would be traveling in. I have had a dozen APBs out on my car. Never got caught. Mainly did it for fun because I knew my car was faster and I knew where everyone was.